Trade agreements and bilateral treaties expand use of investor‐state arbitration provisions

In a move to help arbitration gain an even stronger foothold as an alternative to unreliable national courts, the U.S. State Department with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this year released a new draft U.S. model bilateral investment treaty. The new model's objective, writes Mark Kantor, of Washington, D.C., in the first of two parts, is to provide a consistent approach to dealing with conflict over investment provisions in Nafta and other free trade agreements, and future treaties.